zondag 26 maart 2017

Apart from flying flies, wasps and mosquitoes (which I never have seen on stamps so far), the flying 'objects' I see around my home on a regular base are birds and airplanes (and leaves and maple seeds in autumn).

Dutch PostNL has started to issue a serie of four beautiful bird photo stamp sheets this year.
The third and fourth stamp sheet I hope to get in future. At this moment I can show you some flying birds from the first two sheets:

This flying bird I happened to receive yesterday, but it is in transit. The stamp is on someone else's chaincard, so I have to forward it. But fortunately I could make a scan in time :-)

Luckily some months ago I received one of my own chaincards back, themed 'aviation'. Here it is, after traveling from the Netherlands via Singapore, Thailand, Russia, back home, now showing several airplanes, and a helicopter:

vrijdag 24 maart 2017

I happened to have to go to The Hague some days ago. On my way by bus and train I came along Schiphol Airport. Of course I took the opportunity to visit the book- and stationery store there, to see if there were interesting postcards.
So I found this Airport postcard which I sent to Jael in Singapore.

And fortunately Dutch PostNL has issued Schiphol Airport stamps last year, so I was happy to be able to add these to my card for her.

woensdag 22 maart 2017

Thanks to Eva I learned about Naomi's Thousand Postcard Project.
Naomi's husband gave her thousand unused vintage postcards, dating anywhere from 1900 to 1970, and he challenged her to send every one of them out into the world. Thus she invites us all to provide her with our postal address. And here it is: Naomi's postcard to me!
Besides a kind personal message from Naomi and the fact that this is the 189th card out of 1000, the (printed) text on the back says it is a reproduction of a photo, taken in 1890 at an early Indiana state fair.

I love Australian stamps, so I am happy to see these stamps added by Naomi to her card for me.
And this nice rubber stamp print about the project:

And the nagy smaragdfémdarázs, which in English is "Large Cuckoo Wasp", but literally translated it will have to to something with the bright colourful smaragd ('smaragd' also is Dutch, and means emerald). Ah, the online translator says 'large emerald metallic wasp'.
More stamps from this serie you can find here.

zondag 5 maart 2017

I was very happy and lucky that Dutch PostNL issued a serie of ten chicken stamps two months ago:

On 28th of January 2017, the Chinese Year of the Monkey turned into the Year of the Rooster. To my surprise Dutch Post had issued a Year of the Monkey stamp sheet (in August 2016, while the Year already was half a year old).
And in November 2016 there was this announcement of the coming change of the year, by this stamp sheet:

The text under 2016 and 2017 says: "Farewell Year of the Monkey" and "Welcome Year of the Rooster".

And in the end of January 2017 the Year of the Rooster stamp sheet has been issued:

You read it well: I was not only happy, but also lucky for these issues by Dutch PostNL! What is the case? Via Instagram I learned to know stamp loving people from almost all-over the world, and various people are joining so-called 'chaincard' projects. This way you form a group of 4 to 6 (sometimes more) people, mostly around a chosen theme. Via the private, so-called 'direct message' option of Instagram you can exchange addresses. Each person starts to send a postcard, with stamps matching the chosen theme. Consequently you send the next received cards to always-the-same member of this tiny group. And after having traveled via all countries of the participants, in the end your own card returns, with stamps from all of the participating countries.

Thanks to the Year of the Rooster, and to mail companies in several countries who issued 'Year of the Rooster' stamps, many chaincards are exchanged on this theme.

I couldn't resist to participate in some of them. This way several rooster stamps have been landed in my place, which I have forwarded to the next participants. For instance, from and to Hong Kong:

From and to Japan:

From and to Korea (in real some of the dark lines are shining like gold):

From and to Singapore:

Not only Asian mail companies issued Year of the Rooster stamps. Also, for instance, Ukraine:

And here you see a Canadian and USA stamp, to which I added the Dutch one:

All of the above stamps are from other people's postcards so they just were in transit at my place (and fortunately my scanner did work :-) ). Hopefully they will arrive soon and safely to the owners.

Meanwhile the first of my own chaincards returned home! To which, besides the Dutch and Singaporean stamps, also Year of the Rooster stamps from Taiwan and Thailand have been added. And the last sender, Komimi from Taiwan, was so kind to decorate my card with a few more nice birds:

The front side of the postcard (which I chose beacuse there is a Rooster in this famous English song):

zaterdag 4 maart 2017

I tend to just link to one blog post from July 2016. Because I thought: isn't home - the 'home country' - the place where your heart is, where your friends are? On that blog post I shared two cards. One sent to an old friend in the city of Nijmegen, the city where I grew up, went to school and university. The other sent to a friend in Amsterdam, the city where I have been born and to which I live close now. Both cities make me feel home. But above all: friends make me feel home. And, also mailboxes make me feel home :-) As these shorten the distance to 'far-away' friends, to mail lovers like you!

Anyhow, I'll show some pictures of my two main 'home' cities, regions, here, too.

This postcard I bought ages ago, I think in the eighties. It shows a part of a shop at the corner of the Van Welderenstraat (a street in the city center of Nijmegen). Our school was close by, so in the breaks we wandered through this city center.
Recently I saw both the fountain pen and the fountain pen shop had disappeared, but a short search on the internet learned that at least the pen shop still exists, it just moved to a larger location in the same street.

The Waalbrug, Bridge over the river Waal, is a landmark. I always love to see it, and to pass under the large bows to enter Nijmegen (via the road, not via the water :-) ).

I even drew it, and put it on a personalized stamp.

In the upper right corner you see a tiny stamp of Schiphol, aka Amsterdam Airport, which is close to my present hometown.

Below you can see a part of a stamp sheet about Nijmegen. In contrary to my present home region in the really flat west of the Netherlands, the city of Nijmegen, and almost all of the east of our country, is hilly. There is a nice view from the Valkhof over this Waalbrug.
The statue pictured shows Marieke van Nimwegen. I never read or heard the complete (medieval) story, but the status also is located in the city center, and I consider a landmark, too.

From Nijmegen 120 kms to the north-west, to Amsterdam:

Below you see the Dam Square. This is located in 'hartje Amsterdam', 'the heart of Amsterdam' = the city center of Amsterdam. You can see two lion statues behind (in real: in front of) the Monument on the Dam.
My late grandmother told me that in 1927, when she was 17 years old, the lion's weren't there yet. Instead there were kiosks. My grandmother wanted to work there, to sell newspapers, but she was one year too young. Finally her father convinced the owner to get her job, and she did very well.
A few years later she got married, which in those days meant she had to stop working outdoors. And a few more years later my mother was born.

Finally I'll show you three map cards.

Funny is that the rivers in real are north from the cities: the Waal is north of Nijmegen, and the IJ is north of Amsterdam. But the old cards show the rivers on bottom of the cities, or the cities on top of the rivers:

Nijmegen (Novio Magum is the name given by the founders, the Romans, over 2000 years ago):

Amsterdam:

And on this larger map card you can see where both cities are located: